I have a computer with 2 hard drives in it. They are both SATA. I also have 2 DVD burners, and each is on an a separate IDE channel.
One hard drive is my C drive, and one is labeled F. Both drives are bootable, but I normally boot from C. There is a program called Bounceback
which should back up the C drive to the F drive.
There was a sudden power outage the other day. I restarted the computer, and my taskbar and icons disappear. The taskbar appears for less than 1

second when Windows loads, but then disappears. I can get to the task manager, and launch SOME programs, but not others.
It appears that the computer is booting from the F drive, and while it can start windows, it can't do much else.
My question is, how do I get Windows to start from my hard drive? If I unplug the F drive,forcing it to boot from the C drive, the computer boots to the Windows screen, but then nothing happens.

Find your install disc and run Repair.

I agree, and watch closely to make 'sure' that you repair the C: drive and not the F:. I've had it happen that the install goes to F: when I meant it to go to C:. Others have complained about this same quirk.

Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

By the way, I discovered a while back that if XP has trouble booting a drive, it will switch to another bootable drive on the system to complete the boot. VERY strange!

Do yourself a favor BACKUP!